§ 2.43 p.m.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGHMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
§ [The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to make their financial contribution to the new plans of expansion drawn up by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, including the construction of the proposed new "storage rings" and 300 GeV accelerator.]
§ THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (LORD BOWDEN)My Lords, Her Majesty's Government will pay their contributions to the normal expanding programme of CERN. The size of these contributions for 1965 and 1966 has already been agreed. The CERN administration have formally proposed that storage rings should be added to their present machine. Her Majesty's Government are now considering whether, having regard to other calls on their resources, the merits of the proposal justify the expenditure involved. The design study of the possible 300 GeV accelerator is not yet complete. To assist this study, Her Majesty's Government have decided to put forward for appraisal a possible site for such a machine near Mundford, in Norfolk. This does not imply any commitment to participate in the building of a European 300 GeV accelerator.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGHMy Lords, I am most grateful to the noble 277 Lord for that reply, and glad to know that we are pursuing this work. But am I not right in thinking that a very considerable expenditure is involved—I believe up to £25 million for the storage rings? If we go ahead with the 300 GeV machine it will cost some£130 million and Britain's contribution will be of the order of over £4 million a year over the next nine years, in addition to the large sums which we are already spending on nuclear physics in this country.
§ LORD BOWDENMy Lords, it is difficult to reply to this question without giving a Written Answer. As a country we pay something of the order of 24 per cent. of the cost of CERN, this being the figure which has been agreed as representative of our gross national product as compared with that of the other participating countries. The programme of CERN is decided, as your Lordships know, by a committee which includes representatives of all the participating countries. It is hoped to reach a decision about the storage rings in June. It will add £5 million to £6 million a year to the expenditure from 1967-68 and we shall contribute about one-quarter of this. There are many proposals for the development of CERN, including the improvement of the existing machine—for example, an increase in the intensity of its beam—and the storage rings are a proposed ancillary. The big machine, if we come to build it, will be enormously more expensive. It will cost at least £120 million, as a minimum estimate. My own view is that this figure will be very considerably exceeded. No decision to build it has yet been arrived at. If it were to be built, it would be again a jointly organised enterprise, to which we should contribute about a quarter. The decision whether to proceed will not be taken until the autumn of this year, and will depend entirely on the total resources which are available for nuclear physics in this country and in Europe.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGHMy Lords, I am grateful for that reply, but does the noble Lord not think, in view of the vast cost of these new machines, 278 that it would be desirable for Europe and America to join together to build one of these machines, and would it not be desirable, as I feel the noble Lord would agree, to locate it in this country?
§ LORD BOWDENMy Lords, this again is a complicated question. Certainly collaboration with America would be most desirable. The Americans have proposed that, if ever the time comes to build an even larger machine, one of 500 to 600 GeV, this would certainly have to be financed internationally. At the moment they are not very receptive to the idea of collaborating with us in the smaller machine, but I hope very much that this can be done. The idea that it should be built in this country is one over which we can have no direct control. Many competing sites have been put forward—by Germany, France and Switzerland, to my knowledge—but our site seems likely to be as good as most and will have to be considered with the rest. As for the storage rings, they must inevitably be considered separately as a much smaller item. Large though the cost is, they will cost only one-tenth of the expenditure on the big machine and they will be part of the ordinary CERN expansion programme.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGHI thank the noble Lord for that reply. Does he not agree that one of the main objects of this large machine will be the isolation of the rather elusive nutrino. Does he put a high priority on research of this kind?
§ LORD BOWDENMy Lords, I think that I really must ask the noble Earl to allow me to discuss this matter with him in private, as it is hardly a matter for the House. I assure him that serious attempts have been made to isolate nutrinos, mostly in coal mines in remote parts of the earth, in very large tanks of liquid. I do not know whether this new machine would be used for that pupose; but none the less this subject is one of the most important and vital in the whole field of science. Many of the ablest physicists in the world are fascinated by it and it would be wrong for us not to give them such support as we can.